Just Another Number
by Travithian Axile
Summary: FFVII Christmas fic. Pregame, oneshot. As a child, Sephiroth never really knew what Christmas meant, despite Professor Gast's best intentions, and we all know where that leads.


Author's Note: So I was studying Great Expectations this year, and when we were discussing Estella, my lit teacher raised the allegory of the cave, which basically says, 'You can't miss what you never got.' I wonder if that was true for Sephiroth, when he was a child. Anyway, in this fic, Professor Gast tells Sephiroth about Christmas.

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**A Final Fantasy VII Christmas Production:**

**Just Another Number**

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The child looked up at him, solemn eyes large and unwavering in his small wan face. He sat on a chair, perfectly straight, and never fidgeted, his rounded hands placed firmly over his knees. Gast stood in the doorway of the office and stared back at this strange, inexplicable child that he had helped raise, and felt something stir within him, like a deep-tugging current that belied the smooth surface of a calm lake. 

"You're back early, Gast," his colleague observed, his narrow dark eyes darting to the side. He looked like a criminal, thin and furtive, a complete contrast to the boy from whom he sat opposite. Hojo always sat hunched, a posture that might have been built into his genes, and his fingers were always tip-tapping, moving on invisible keys, echoing the thought processes that moved lightning-quick through his mental calculator.

"I've often been told that I'm a workaholic," Gast responded, shrugging as he came through the door to stand behind the boy, whose eyes followed him with blank curiosity. "Though, apparently, not as much as you. You didn't show up at the company party at all."

A frown twitched across Hojo's thin lips, and he reached up to adjust his spectacles. "A mere date, nothing more. It certainly means nothing to a perfect soldier." Here he nodded, with some irritation, at the calm, silent boy, who might have smiled if he understood what a smile was.

"I wish you wouldn't keep saying that, Hojo." Gast crouched down to look the boy straight in the eyes, and smiled gently. "He's just a child. You can't rush things. Childhood is the greatest experiment of the human life…it's the time where we can do freely what we want, without repercussions. You keep the child too secluded."

"And you're too sentimental," Hojo said, and if anyone could make that sound like an insult, it was Hojo. Gast brushed it off, far too used by now to his eccentric partner, though there were times when words rose to his lips he could not hold back. Gast sometimes envied Hojo his professional detachment when working on what he called his subjects, and other times was glad he was here to act as the human heart alongside Hojo's diamond-edged brilliance. "Anyway, what were you doing before I arrived?" Gast asked. "Asking more questions?"

"It's useless," Hojo said, frustrated, indicating the sheaf of papers on his desk. "The brat knows all the textbook answers by now, but since it's not _my _funds that the project is running on, I can't do anything about it but waste precious working time." He gave a disgusted sigh, glaring daggers at the boy, who lowered his head to examine something interesting on his fingernail. "If I could do everything my way, _without _an ignoramus of a boss and a bleeding heart of a colleague, I might actually get something done."

"You aren't wasting office time," Gast pointed out, trying to hide his amusement. "You're meant to be _partying _right now, Mister Work-Is-My-Life."

Hojo waved a dismissive hand. "_All _my time is precious," he said with his characteristic arrogance. "And by the way, get that thing off your head. We have a reputation of professionalism to maintain, you do realize."

"It's a nice hat," Gast said defensively. "It's festive and the place needs cheering up like you need a personality makeover."

"Yes."

The quiet syllable, uttered barely above the volume of a breath, had both the men's heads snapping about so fast they nearly broke their necks. The boy had raised his head and was looking at the red and white Santa hat perched on top of Gast's head with disconcerting joviality with an expression of general approval. Then again, perhaps it was because Hojo disapproved of it. Gast often had the feeling that if they were in a detective novel, he'd be playing the good cop.

"Wonderful," Hojo said to Gast with annoyance. "You've given him your oddball humor. This had better not be permanent."

Gast hid his smile. "They say that children get their traits from their parents, which in a sense, we are. Ours are the faces that Sephiroth sees around the laboratory the most often, after all."

"A soldier uses strength to get his point across," Hojo said flatly. "He does not need _humor."_

"When people are laughing at you, they don't fear you. Then you can surprise them," Gast said reasonably. "You don't have to follow that old-fashioned nonsense so rigidly. For a groundbreaking scientist, you're too fixed in your ways."

Hojo muttered something unintelligible under his breath, and Gast caught the words, "annoying" and "what would he know." He sighed, turning back to the child, whose momentary animation had faded, leaving that pale, silent statue once more. It's Christmas, he thought, children all over the world are opening their presents and laughing and singing, and here this child is, with nothing to look forward to, alone in a dank office overflowing with paper with a man who frankly needs several important adjustments to his empathy levels. For another second he felt that strange, intangible _wrongness _within him, something like regret and something like pity, and in its wake he felt breathless, unhappy, and drained.

Slowly, he reached up and deposited the cheery Santa hat on Sephiroth's head, where it slipped over his eyes with a certain charming incongruity as the boy tilted his head upwards in surprise. Hojo, still engaged in his one-sided mumbled rant, failed to notice. Sephiroth glanced at him dismissively, and looked back at Gast with his characteristic lack of expression that nevertheless managed to convey, with just the most miniscule of changes, his query.

"Do you like it?" Gast asked, broadening his smile in an attempt to set a good example.

Sephiroth got the hint, or at least he sensed an opportunity to annoy Hojo to no end, because his lips curved upwards in one of his rare smiles. It was about as friendly as the smiles of those nice men who go down dark alleyways to rescue meandering drunks, as well as the contents of their wallets, but it was nevertheless, a smile, from which Gast took heart.

"Merry Christmas," the boy said softly, taking the hat down and turning it over and over in his hands with a thoughtful expression. The tiny brass bell sewn on the end chimed brightly with every movement. "I had not noticed the date."

For some reason, even though there was no outward change on the boy's face, Gast felt suddenly, unaccountably, guilty. "You should!" he said, too quickly and too loudly, interrupting Hojo in mid-mumble. "Christmas is a _wonderful _time. It celebrates the greater side of human nature—love, generosity, warmth, hope. No one is left behind." He came to an awkward stop, gazing with sadness at the boy before him, with his too-wise eyes and brittle smile, the Christmas hat a glaring beacon of wrongness on his legs.

"Please stop trying to corrupt him," Hojo muttered, reaching past and snatching the offending item from Sephiroth's unresisting grip. He tossed it carelessly on his tabletop. "I'm not going to sit back and watch you simply unravel all that we've accomplished. We've wasted enough time chatting, now get to work. There are no vacations in my personal timetable."

Gast felt his legendary amiability start to erode. He held his temper in check. "Sephiroth…" He said the name like an apology, soft and almost urgent. "You do know that I care about you? That I want you to be special, stronger than anyone else?" He would have said _Do you know that I'm sorry, _but he did not, because Hojo would have then said _You do not ever attach yourself to subjects if you wish to be scientific, _and _I always said you were too soft for the hard going. _

Sephiroth blinked very slowly, like a sun-dozed lizard. "I see. I do appreciate that." He sounded bored, and Gast wondered if the child even understood his meaning, or the underlying plea beneath—_Do you regret this as much as I sometimes do. _

"Thank you for the hat and for the lecture," Sephiroth added, politely, clasping his hands together. "Though it was not necessary, you seemed to feel I needed it." Beside Sephiroth, Hojo started to smirk, a dark, unpleasant smirk that curled the side of his thin lips. Sephiroth looked up into Gast's eyes, respectful and courteous, and Gast saw himself mirrored in the impenetrable surface of the boy's green eyes. "Christmas just doesn't sound that interesting to me."

"You could start with the file I left you on your desk," Hojo said helpfully, his amusement intensifying as Sephiroth bowed his head. "Meanwhile, the brat and I have the President's monthly report to catch up on, so would you please excuse yourself?"

"I understand," Gast said.

"I wonder if you do," Hojo murmured, his dark eyes following Gast as the professor left his office with a perhaps unneeded alacrity.

Bereft of the cheerful mood that he had left the party with, Gast walked briskly across the corridor to his own office, brooding. He rested his hand on the doorknob, but did not turn it. "Sephiroth will grow up to be special," he whispered to himself. "Everyone will love him. He'll be…happy."

He turned the knob, stepped in, and closed the door carefully behind him.

* * *

"Still," Sephiroth said with something approaching malice to the scowling Hojo, and reached out a small hand to touch the discarded hat on the desk. "It's a nice hat." 

**_/end/_****  
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End file.
